Vampiric Flops and Flights: Underworld, Queen of the Damned

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Borderline Sci-Fi/Fantasy

All sci-fi movies which have too many fantasy elements/unexplained phenomenae to classify properly as science fiction.

Ok--Underworld is vampiric, granted--but I thought this movie did a good job of merging of the fantasy/mythology/technology elements. Especially with the whole "viral infection" slant, and the with the war between the vamps and lycanthropes. Very progressive and up-to-date.

-----------SPOILER--------------

My one beef was the whole "ending." Can we please come up with something new?? I feel like the whole "betrayal by my creator" slant is sooo played out. Is it me? is it only me? i saw that coming a mile away.

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oh yeah---the Lycan Lucius' right hand man? Rix, or Raul, or Ryu or something? HOTHOTHOT. ( and I dont usually even go for the overly musclebound. . . .). Normally, I am not a Kate Winslet fan (reminds me too much of Nicole Kidman), but she looked ok in this one.

And Queen of the Damned ----------->sucked. Compared to "Interview with a Vampire" (with Christian Slater and Brad Pitt) it was a real loser film. Stuart Townsend will never be Brad Pitt, sorry guys. (Altough, lately, Brad isn't Brad, y'know?)
The entire movie cam off utterly pretentious, and the acting? What can I say? All the undulating and gyrating in the world couldn't save Aaliyah's Queen character (God rest her soul--->I dont mean to speak ill of the dead. . .), and Townsend is just not pretty enough, nor does he have the commanding presence that LeStat was supposed to have (and good old Pitt had in "Interview").

But what do I know? I'm not an Anne Rice reader, I'm a Laurell K. reader.

Underworld had good action scenes and a good story, but it dragged in the middle and was somewhat too preachy. Also, the chemistry between Beckinsale and the love interest guy (forgot his name) was unconvincing. In addition, the characters were really poor shots.

I haven't seen Queen of the Damned, though, so I can't comment on it.

A few vampire movies that I enjoy are From Dusk Till Dawn, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, and the Blade movies.

For clarification, Mack, it wasn't Kate Winslet (Titanic), it was Kate Beckinsale (Pearl Harbor). I thought 'Underworld' was a pretty decent film.

As for 'Queen of the Damned' it was so bad that even Anne Rice didn't want it made. Stuart Townsend was a horrible Lestat, especially compared to Tom Cruise as Lestat. All the characters were completely wrong compared to the book. And whoever took over as Louis in this one, just looked fruity.

David Talbot, from the Talamasca, was an extremely old man in the books, a role better suited for someone like Sir John Attenborough (Jurassic Park)

Marius was written in the book as an extremely handsome, blonde, Romanesque build, etc. Not the balding, darkhaired, etc, weenie who played him in this film.

As for Maharet, she wasn't the one that finished Akasha off, it was Maharet's twin vampire sister Mekare. And she didn't turn into a marble statue like this ending showed.

So, again, 'Queen' sucked ass. They should have respected Rice's opinion and scrapped this version for one directed by Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire) and gotten Tom and Brad to reprise their roles and more accurate actors portraying the 'Children of the Millenia'

Yeah--Underworld had great action, but the love story development was seriously lacking---it was obvious that they were trying to set the "current" love story as a parallel between the old love story with Lucius----and they did it badly--kinda "in your face" no finesse whatsoever. But a good movie, though.

Thank for the winslet-beckinsdale correction.

QOD was so terrible, I almost want to go read the book to get the correct version. . .

If you do read it, Mack, make sure you read 'The Vampire Lestat' first. The movie 'Queen' was a mish mash of the two books with 'Lestat' following 'Interview'. Basically, as in the end of the 'Interview' movie, Lestat decided that a few things needed to be better fleshed out than what Louis told in his story.

Another thing they screwed up was the fact that Lestat did NOT sire Jesse.

Originally posted by Wachesaw Doesn't all vamp movies suck? They're all the same, all stupid and boring.

Exactly--they really do need to get a new angle. But I thought that Underworld did a good job of adding a (semi) new angle with the advanced technology (--liquid silver bullets, liquid silver sunlight ----was it nitroglycerine, or glycerine? Im no scientist!) and viral transmission angle---it made vampirism a scientific phenomenon, not a mystical, otherworldly wonder.

Underworld was painful because of those little glimpses of cleverness (The bullets, how cool the werewolves were, the nifty jumps off high buildings.) and how crap the rest of it was. My fave vampire movie is definitely Interview with a Vampire, though Anne Rice fans were aped so cruelly well in one Buffy episode that I find it hard to take seriously now...

Queen of the Damned was horrible....Lost Boys is fun but overrated and pretty dated, though I'm happy to acknowledge its contribution to vampire movies/ TV/ books/ Shoulderpads. What the genre needs is for somebody to do for it what Ginger Snaps did for werewolfers. Van Helsing has Dracula, right?

Location: USA ~ the outer rim, furtherst point from the center of the Universe

Re: Vampiric Flops and Flights: Underworld, Queen of the Damned

Queen of the Dammed is a wonderful book, I liked it better than the Vampire Lestat. It is really to bad that they made that horrible pice of nothing that some call a movie. Totaly ruied the book for anyone who has no yet read it, probably even encouraging people not to read it at all.